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How-To Geek

Would you like to change out the icons on your taskbar with a beautiful set of icons that all go together? Here’s how you can change out the random candy-colored icons for a stylish icon set of your choice.

As you use Windows 7 and keep more programs pinned to your taskbar, you may start noticing that your icons clash with each other. From bright colored icons to more modern icons with text, seldom do your app icons truly go together.

So, instead of dealing with clashing colors and designs, let’s create new taskbar icons. You technically can change icons directly from the taskbar. Simply right-click on the icon in the taskbar or click and drag up to open the jumplist, then right-click on the program icon near the bottom of the jumplist and select Properties to change the icon. Unfortunately, though, the taskbar icons did not update immediately when changed this way, and sometimes didn’t change even after rebooting.

Instead, let’s create new, customized icons for our taskbar. To do this easily, open the folder that contains all of your pinned icons by entering the following in the Explorer address bar:

Select all of the icons, and copy them to a new folder. We just used a new folder on the desktop for this, as you’ll only need to store them in the new location temporarily.

Once you’ve got the icons in the new folder, right-click one and select Properties.

Select the Shortcut tab if it doesn’t automatically open to it, and click Change Icon.

Now click Browse to find the new icon you want.

You can switch the icon to any icon from an .ico, .exe, or .dll file that contains icons, but if you’re using an icon set to get a harmonious look, then you’ll likely be using .ico files. Once you’ve select the icon you want, click Ok in the previous dialogs to save your changes.

Now, repeat this with all the icons in your folder. This will take a few minutes, but when you’re done, you should have a harmonious set of icons for your taskbar.

Unfortunately, some shortcuts are more tricky, and won’t let you change the icon. When we tried to change the icons on any Office apps or certain other programs, the Change Icon button was dimmed and unusable.

Instead, we’ll need to create a new shortcut to this program. Right-click in the folder or on your desktop, and select New –> Shortcut.

In the dialog, enter the path to the application you want, and click Next to finish the wizard.

Now customize this new shortcut as before.

If you want to add new icons that you didn’t already have pinned, a simple way to get the shortcut is to find the app in the Start Menu and select Send to –> Desktop. Then change the icon to the one you want as before.

Once you’ve got all your new icons, you’ll need to unpin your existing shortcuts from the taskbar. Right-click or click and drag up on each icon to open its jumplist, and then select Unpin this program from taskbar.

Now, drag your new icons to your taskbar, and line them up as you want.

Moments later, you’ll have a nice, customized taskbar with icons that look great together!

Additionally, you can group your taskbar icons using the trick we recently wrote about, and get all of your similar apps together so you’ll easily find them. Now that’s a customized taskbar!

This is a great way to make your PC truly personalized, and you might make it easier to use if you can find your apps easier. It may take several minutes to get it looking just like you want, but if you like it, that’s all that matters!

If you’d like the exact desktop look we used here, here’s the icons and wallpapers:

I’m not sure what part of this is at fault, i believe its the start orb changer, but once i did this i can no longer use the Zune toolbar as part of the taskbar. Zune will only minimize to the icon now. any way to fix this?

Nice post but I thought you were going to show us how to customize icon for any app.
I thought you were going to show an application wherein you can drop all the icons of the apps that you want to change. And then the output becomes something like the icons in your post. But anyway thanks for the token start orb link:}

Hello I liked the article of yours, I had been wishing to customize the way my desktop looks, however, there are some icons that are dimmed and cannot be choosen like MS Office and Safari.
I tried your method of creating a new shortcut and changing icons but then still “change icon” is dimmed. I don’t know where could I have gone wrong and that you were able to do it.
Please do let me know

I’m having trouble changing my icons back to the normal icon. I’ve changed them and it shows that it set to the default icon but on my task bar it still shows the one I changed it to earlier. I’ve rebooted and I’m not sure what else I could do to get them to change back. Thanks for any help.

I changed the target icons in %appdata%/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Quick Launch/User Pinned/Taskbar, and also on the taskbar icon properties, and these new icons aren’t showing up. Even after a reboot. Thoughts ?

@Jordan – That was my experience exactly, so as I noted in the article, you’ll likely need to unpin the icons from your taskbar, then pin your new tweaked icons to the taskbar. Literally, I took every icon off the taskbar, and pinned on the new ones. You could try clearing your icon cache if you want, but I think re-pinning them would be simpler.

Great article. I was wondering why this would work differently than simply changing the icon on the taskbar itself. Don’t get me wrong, I have changed the icons from the taskbar directly and have some of the issues you mentioned. Sometimes I loose the icon after a day or two and they revert to the original.

I am just trying to figure out why the icons being changed in the actual folder that contains them all would work differently? Hope my questions makes sense. This worked but I hope they stay this way after a day or two. If they do, I will be happy but I am still confused on why this method works and changing them on the taskbar directly does not.

Or, you could just convert to the Apple OSX what already has nice icons in its Dock. Also, changing those icons, even to custom ones is very easy, too. Search on “Hackintosh” to learn how to get away fro Windows and enjoy computers again.

It am having troubles with the black icons showing up from the download. All I get is a black screen on both sets of black. The white come out with no problem. I opened the white icons I needed and saved them as a negative image but that leaves me with a black image in a square white box rather than a floating image……. any suggestions? Thanks

The non-windows program’s icons can be changed in the fashion of the article.
Most often, find the .EXE file of that particular program and change it’s icon. The icon should be different on the systemTray after restarting the program. If the program itself changes the systemTray icon at times, it may be more difficult to customize.

The windows OS systemTray icons can also be changed.
However, it’s not so easy. These icons are packed into .DLLs and .EXE files of the OS.
They CAN be changed; it’s not for the inexperienced user.

So, this article is for beginners
Changing the non-OS sysTray icons is more of an adept exercise.
Changing the OS sysTray icons is for the advanced users.

Great write up by the way. I tend to take little things like this for granted.